Storms, Insurance, and Your Roof

You've got your power back on, you've had a look around to see what the damage is, and you're ready to repair what the storm did to your home.

Now what?

5800 property claims are expected in the greater Kansas City area in the wake of the recent severe storms. Naturally, insurance companies are doing their best to control costs and reduce the amount they pay out to homeowners.

Unfortunately, this means that homeowners who have less information will be the losers. Insurance companies will try to repair or replace only part of a damaged roof, without considering how that affects your warranty. They'll try to offer a payment based only on the square footage of the damage, not considering the effect the shape and construction of the roof have on roofing costs. Faced with these responses, you may be tempted to go with the cheapest price you can possibly find -- or you may feel forced to do so.

Instead, let your roofing professionals work with the insurance company for you. At Bill West Roofing, we meet your insurance adjuster, we work out any price discrepancies, and we invoice your insurance company when the job is complete. As it says on our website,  "We work with all insurance companies but we work for you."

Hail on the Roof

We've been enjoying some spectacular weather lately, but it's not long since we had hail, and we'll likely have some more before the season is over.

Hail is just balls of ice falling like rain or snow from the sky. Gravity brings it onto your home or car, and the wind can drive it against surfaces even more strongly.

Makes you glad you have a roof.

Most hail damage to roofs is just cosmetic: a pock marked vent or a shingle with a little bit of scarring. But hail can do actual damage to your roof in the form of split wood shingles, balding asphalt shingles, or plain old broken shingles of any kind.

Bill West Roofing can help with repairs now and hail-resistant shingles for the future.

While repairing your roof without professional guidance may cut costs in the short term, it’s not always a long-term fix.

If your roof needs some repairs, do some research to administer a proper fix. If you have any questions or are uncomfortable, seek the guidance of a qualified roofing contractor so you don’t make common roofing mistakes.

Homeowners often make errors, unknowingly, when they make routine repairs to their roof. Recognizing the problems and correcting them can keep your roof in top-shape condition, and safe from the spring elements.

Inadequate fastening

Nails and fasteners that keep the roof deck together and the shingle roofing adhered to the deck can be a sign of sub-par installation, and can pierce the shingles. Remove the loose or mislaid nails and replace with new. Use up to six nails per shingle, laid right under the seal-down strip of the shingle. Replace cracked shingles at this time.

Shingle roof selection problems

Choosing a shingle that has a continuous seal-down strip can contribute to leaks. Select a shingle product that has breaks in the adhesive between each strip; this prohibits water from seeping under the shingle. When repairing roofs with valleys, make sure to add flashing at the angle to prevent water damage.

Flashing problems

Metal flashing is used to stop water from seeping in around chimneys, valleys, windows and skylights. The misplacement of flashing can create leaks. Chimney flashing must be set into mortar to serve its purpose; repairing with caulk is a common mistake. Misalignment of step flashing is also common. Flashing pieces should overlap approximately 2 inches and be fastened with just one nail in the upper corner.

What Can You Learn from Our Work Gallery?

When you visit any roofer's work gallery, you're going to see pictures of roofs. Maybe of buildings, too, but mostly roofs.

As you look at one photo of another of roofs, you may wonder what you're looking for. Can you really tell the quality of a roof by looking at a gallery photo? Can you, if you're not a roofer, tell anything from looking at a photo?

Here are some things that you can learn from a gallery, no matter how much knowledge you have about roofing:

• How many jobs has the roofer done? Our gallery shows just a small percentage of the jobs we've done, and it features lots of beautiful roofs in Kansas and Missouri. Since we've been building roofs in the Kansas City area for more than three decades, it's easy for us to choose a nice representative sampling. If you're considering a roofer who shows only two or three jobs in the gallery, ask why.
• Has the roofer done the kind of work you need done? A roofer whose gallery shows only residential work might not be qualified to do your commercial job, and vice versa. If none of the jobs involve complex roof lines and you have an old house with an interesting roof, that roofer might have problems getting your job completed satisfactorily.

If you're not sure what you're looking at, ask. We're proud of our work, and we'll be glad to talk with you about the jobs we've done. 

TAMKO Roofing Materials

At Bill West Roofing, we believe in using the best materials. We've been around for more than 35 years, so you can see that we take the long view.

One of the suppliers we depend on is TAMKO. TAMKO is a Missouri company just like us. They started out in the late 1940s in Joplin, planning to have a presence in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. That's where the name came from.

By now, TAMKO has a national presence, and is one of the top suppliers of roofing materials. They offer lots of different colors and types of materials. One of the newest items is roofing material designed to keep your home cool. By choosing light colors (TAMKO has tested and certified the specific colors that work best) you can save a bundle on your air conditioning costs this summer.

Call us to ask about cool roofs.

Just what is a roofing "square"?

Question: What is a roofing square?

Answer: By definition a roofing square is a 100 square section of roof (a 10′ x 10′ area). Roofers use a roofing square as a measurement of how much roofing material will be needed in the installation of a new roof.

In other words, just like tiling a kitchen floor is measured in square footage and subsequently number of tiles needed to fill particular dimensions, roofing squares are used to measure the size of a roofing project, which when compared to the size of the roofing shingle, will determine how much material needs to be used.

A number of companies will come in and give a bid for your roof saying it'll be X amount of squares. Then come back after the job is finished and tell you it was more.

Here at Bill West Roofing, however, we bid by the job. This way, your proposal is as accurate as possible. And you won't get any surprises in the end based off of squares of shingles.

Missed Connections: Roofing Edition

The weather this February has been unusually warm and that may have you thinking about spring. We all have to-lists and perhaps you also have some home improvement planned.

Here's something I overheard recently.

This guy was outside in his yard doing, I don't honestly know what. Enjoying the first above freezing day in an eternity? Regardless, he took a look at his roof and noticed that some of his shingles seemed to be broken.

"There are just big gaps in my roof" he said to the guy sitting next to him.
"Have your kids been on the roof?"
"My kids? No. No, my kids don't climb on the roof and break off shingles."

There is a simple answer for this and it doesn't involve children trying to kill themselves on snow covered roofs.

This man probably has asphalt shingles. Asphalt shingles become brittle in cold weather making them more likely to break in gusty, winter winds. Kansas City has gotten some record lows and record winds this winter. Even if his shingles have never broken in this manner before, they certainly could have now.

I didn't interrupt him to tell him that. Consider this, then, the Missed Connection posting. It was a warmish day in February...and you were in a Mizzou bar.

And your asphalt shingles are broken from excessive cold and wind.

Spring can't come fast enough.